Hope Leslie, or Early Times in the Massachusetts

Hope Leslie, or Early Times in the Massachusetts, is a novel by Catharine Maria Sedgwick. Published as two volumes in 1827, it received critical acclaim and success. Given the time in which it was published, and the time and place it portrays (seventeenth-century New England), it is impossible to read Hope Leslie without comparing it to contemporary novels such as The Last of the Mohicans by James Fennimore Cooper. Many have argued that Sedgwick’s place in the formation of American literature is at least as foundational as Cooper’s.

On the surface, Hope Leslie appears to reinforce several dominant ideas of the time: for instance, the Indians are often referred to as “savages,” a woman’s place is in the home, and courtly love with all its proprieties must be observed unless one is willing to risk scandal. On closer examination, Sedgwick challenges many of these ideas. While there are, indeed, many references to Native Americans that would be at home in other stereotypical frontier stories, there are others that give Indigenous peoples more credit than they had ever been given before. Magawisca, daughter of a Pequod chief who works for one of the settler families, is the only character in the novel of such courage, equanimity, and grace, that two of the pivotal white characters beg her for moral guidance near the end of Volume Two.

The white women in Hope Leslie, while longing for marriage and comfort, are also fond of adventure and exploration, often refusing to be dictated to by the men in their lives. The idea of traditional marriage itself is inverted when Faith Leslie marries a Pequod and is thoroughly fulfilled by her new life with the tribe.

Themes of racism, westward expansion, divine right, family loyalty, and religious ironies pervade the novel. These themes do not require a thorough teasing out to be obvious. As was common with literature at the time, the author frequently inserts herself into the story to editorialize and instruct. Some readers may find this quaint and charming; others may find it irritating and superfluous. Nevertheless, Hope Leslie is an important work of adventure and literary activism, and it endures as a record of how white Protestant society viewed Native Americans in the seventeenth century.

Ultimately, what is most subversive about Hope Leslie is that the characters most richly rewarded are those who are willing to go against the establishment during a time when religious dogma and patriarchal authority were the laws of the land.